I wrote about my Best of 2016 photos here. What a fun and enlightening experience going through all my 2016 photos was. I feel super fortunate that I had enough good photos that I can do another Top 10 via this Honorable Mentions post… these were the ones that DIDN’T make the cut.. and a lot left that didn’t make Honorable Mentions. Must mean it was a great year.. and it was.

The Mogollon Rim in Northern Arizona is very near to our home, for which I feel very fortunate. The views are stunning, and varied. Every overlook uncovers another view, with great ledges, moss, rocks and trees… truly a photographers haven.

June is one of the best months of the year to see the Milky Way. It is low on the horizon and bright in the sky. With a new moon, it’s the perfect time to get great Milky Way photographs. So with such a great opportunity we took full advantage of it, and got out to see if we could photograph the Milky Way over the Mogollon Rim.

The challenge is to get decent foreground, but far enough away to be able to see it against the starry sky background. The rocks in the front just don’t show up.

So I selected 2 trees… one on each side of the Milky Way and did a 7 photo panorama to show the whole galaxy.

Cool!

Then, I did a star trails photo. This shot is 75 individual shots, each taken for 30 sec, over an hour… then stitched together to show the movement of the stars over time.